Saturday, January 24, 2009

Are you going to watch the Super Bowl? I have a son who lives and breathes football so I have been thoroughly indoctrinated this season about the wonders of Landanian Tomlinson and Darren Sproles and how the Steelers should "die a slow death."

Spencer lost a bit of his spark once San Diego lost to Indiana and hasn 't had quite the enthusiasm for the remaining games though I'm sure he'll be watching the Big Game eagerly when it comes down to it.

But for those of you not mourning the Chargers, who are thrilled for whoever will be playing February 1st Pepsi is offering this Ultimate Super Bowl Party Kit which includes the following for your football viewing pleasure:

A total value of $250--but really, who can put a price on four hours of football? Even without the Chargers?

Here's how to win:

Before 12 am Monday morning click here to reach the giveaway entry form then enter your name and email. I will pick one of the names at random, contact the winner via their email and publish the winner's first name and home town in next Tuesday's post. See the bottom of the entry form for more details.

This giveaway is open to all readers so good luck!

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And if that's not enough contests for you check out the Message Board where there are 50 other contests you can sign up for.

Meanwhile . . . I took the kids to see Inkheart Friday afternoon, I had seen a preview for it when we saw Bedtime Stories. It had looked pretty exciting so with Andrew out of town this week we needed a good pick me up.

I thought Paul Bettany was great, his character was the best and most interesting and was actually pretty complex for what you might consider a "kid's" movie. Playing the role of a character in a story he faces existential questions that made him appealing and more human than the "real life" characters he stands alongside. Every scene he was in was interesting.

I'm a closet Brendan Fraser fan (I'm a little embarrassed to admit how I laughed in George of the Jungle) though this role isn't really comic, the few one-liners are given to his co-stars which was a little disappointing, but I can't help but find him enjoyable nonetheless. The whole thing was generally well-acted but I warn you that Jim Broadbent plays a character that you just want to wrap in duct tape and leave for dead by the side of the road out of frustration.

There were several places where the characters did things that didn't make a lot of sense. You know, the kind of situation where you say, "Why didn't they just do such-and-such which would have taken care of all their problems right then and there?" It also took a little time to get the story established and the first 45 minutes were slower than the previews had indicated.

But anyone who has a love of books and literature--particularly children's literature--will appreciate the constant references to classics such as Alice in Wonderful, the Wizard of Oz and other great books I remember so fondly. If it is a bit slow at the beginning it does have that magical quality that is appealing.

All in all not a bad movie. Lillian (age 6) got bored in it, it was a little too old for her, but the other kids really liked it and Grace said it was fairly faithful to the book which will make the fans happy.

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comments:

You kind of want to do that to Jim Broadbent's character in the book, too. Too smug for his own good. I enjoyed the book--it has a great premise--but wasn't wild about it. I do want to see the movie. I find your reviews very useful!

As to Brendan Fraser--if you can confess it, so can I. I laughed my head off during George of the Jungle.

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